Only Love
by Nimbus 1944
Summary: She may have been the worst woman to enter Harry's life -- and whose fault was that?


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ONLY LOVE

She may have been the worst woman to enter  
Harry's life -- and whose fault was that?

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Original story material is the property of the fanfic author; other material of Rowling et al. falls under the usual disclaimer.

Their death, of course, shocked me. All that magic they had studied and practised hadn't saved them. 

We didn't know until the morning when Vernon led me to his discovery.... the boy sleeping on our doorstep in a blanket, his forehead nearly opened with the most awful jagged gash.

Imagine, a baby left shivering on a doorstep in this day and age? It was a concept out of some medieval fairy tale. Who in their right mind would leave a 15-month-old child unprotected outdoors at night in late October, doorstep or otherwise?

And was the magical world concerned? No. From what Lily had told me, I knew they had the most wonderful hospitals of their own. I imagine they could have repaired the gash without the scar it left, and perhaps even blanked out the boy's memories. Did they? No. They were far too busy _celebrating!_ Without so much as a fare-thee-well, they tossed off the "boy who lived", the very cause of their joy, with a note dumping him on us. Only my Evans blood, he said, would protect him.

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Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley,

I assume by now you have heard about the terrible eventsat Godric's Hollow. For myself and the staff of Hogwarts
School, our deepest condolences at this time of sadness and
loss. Lily and James will be much missed by all those who
knew them.

Since you are the close surviving relatives, and perhaps theonly family he has, I am conveying your nephew Harry James
Potter into your care. As you can tell, he has been through
much terror that a child of his age should not have to endure,
and.... 

Never mind I was already dealing with one lively toddler. Never mind my son might resent the intrusion of a competitor in his life, at an age when he would need constant attention, reassurance and the love of his parents.

Never mind the dead murderer had friends, for that matter. 

Lily's boy Harry, of course, did come with trauma of his own. From what we know now, he could only watch as his mother died most violently, and as the murderer tried to kill _him!_

He had no idea who we were; Vernon had never wanted to associate with "the wacky Potters" and I was never happy about the man Lily had married.

But, babies adapt. By the time he was two, the boy fell into the routine. They say it's true of adults as well; you come to like the people that feed you, even if they are your gaolers.

They also say you can like the ones in your care, even if they are your prisoners.

You couldn't say I hated the boy; he was a helpless orphan, an Evans family relation, denied his mother's love, and abandoned by the very magicians that would idolise him.

Fortunately, the boy didn't need a psychiatrist; we could hardly have afforded one at the time. He blanked out the early memory himself, and once he was old enough to ask, we told him the Potters died in a car crash. He accepted it.

He was a typically happy child, and if anything, he was less demanding of my time. We left him to his flighty, toddling ways, and worried more about our Dudley's upbringing as an educated young gentleman.

We were not rich; we've never been. We did what we could for the boy, but it was not much. Vernon had to dress for business, and have a car for the commute; the mortgage was always hanging over us, and the tax man and the gas board and so on must be paid. We fed four on enough money for three. If we skimped anywhere with the boy, it was to dress him in hand-me-downs, but what parents haven't at some time?

Oh, I watched Harry early on, of course; I watched him like a hawk. I was anxious to see if the Potters had passed on the gene, or bacteria, or whatever it is, that makes witches and wizards what they are. Vernon would certainly not like it, and I did not look forward to a confrontation about it.

Then, one Summer day, Vernon took our little Dudley to the play park. I stayed home, sunning myself in the garden and watching the boy. He had tired of running in circles after a butterfly, and now sat looking at the wind vane barely turning, then stopping. He tilted his head, nodded, and the propeller starting turning again -- quite fast, as though it was in a violent wind. The boy giggled and clapped at his success, as he'd often do thereafter; that giggle would become my bellwether, in fact. I told him to stop it, now! He did; the giggling stopped, and the windvane came to a halt.

I had to tell Vernon, of course. Sooner or later, he would have recognised it on his own. He seethed that this abnormal trait of his in-laws had come to roost under his roof, in his own family.

After that, Vernon was not the same warm, wonderful man I had married. He often raged about Harry, and was quite violent when it fell to him to discipline the boy.

Explaining the boy's abilities to our Dudley would be quite another matter. Why in heaven did these burdens have to fall in my lap?

In retrospect, the magic world sees me as a bad foster mother. Let me ask you, what would _you_ have done? How would _you_ have told your own son, in his most valuable formative years, that he was deficient, lacking the abilities that his playmate had? Would you have told him his uncle had been a wizard, and his aunt a witch, and this scrawny cousin of his would be able to do magic, but he himself would not -- not now, not ever?

Should I put him through what I had been through? 

My parents noticed Lily's weird abilities as a child, and thought she was "clever." Clever! Of course, I tried too, and I could do none of it. Then, when she turned 11, the letter came -- from a man named Dip-it, or something like that -- and that explained it all. Were they shocked? Not for a moment. They were thrilled! One of their daughters was an actual _witch_! "Far out!" they said. For me, it was more like suddenly-far-removed; my sister would have a treat, but I would not. Lily and I had always been so close, as close and loving as sisters always are, but her "clever" tricks had now stepped between us. I saw her walk into a wall at the railroad station, and our relationship was never the same after that.

It would have been so much easier if our Dudley also had the power. Had I carried a dormant gene of magic from the Evans line, and given him the gift? I was intent on spotting any sign, but it never came. 

So, magicians of the world, flail away if you must. Do you really blame our Dudley for the way he reacted to the discovery? It had to happen. I knew the time had come when they were about six, and playing and chatting together like two normal boys, and I heard that silly giggling.

I peeked into the foyer, where they were sitting on the floor. Our Dudley was looking mad, and wrote HARY LOOKS FUNY on the wall with a red crayon -- probably for the second time. The boy stared at it, waved his hand in midair as though he was erasing, and made it disappear; then, more giggling. Now poor Dudley was very frustrated. 

I went in and pulled Harry to his feet and told him to stop. He looked at me, wondering why I was stopping _him_. "Go ahead, Dudley," I said. He slowly picked up the crayon he had guiltily dropped, and wrote it once more. HARY LOOKS FUNY.

Harry looked at it; I wanted him to see it. He began to raise his hand, probably to devastate poor Dudley again with a magical erasure. But I grabbed the boy's chin and turned him, staring angrily into his eyes, and said "NO!" Then I pulled him out of the room, and put him in his cubbyhole. Oh, he cried bitterly, he did. 

Please understand. I knew fully well that our Dudley should have been chastised for defacing the wall; I'm the one who had to stop Dudley, and I had to clean it up myself, if you please. I had to answer his questions about Harry, and explain how he was different, and how he must never speak about it to anyone at school. I was aware when our Dudley began to bully Harry; I tended to the boy's bruises, thank you very much.

But, wasn't that a natural reaction on our Dudley's part, considering Harry was an uncontrollable magician? I have no doubt the boy constantly tortured Dudley with tricks whenever we weren't watching, and Dudley could not respond. 

I didn't ask for this situation. Family trait or not, I had determined every attempt at magic in front of my son would be suppressed! I could not help Harry or Dudley any other way. It was the boy and his magic, or my own son!

We tried everything. The boy was never allowed near books about magic. We denied him a library card, and only exposed him to such books as would interest him in other things. There was so much trash about magic in the programmes on the telly; finally, he had to be denied watching it. We taught him a good work ethic around the house, to distract him from ever practising that detestable weirdness. We filled his day with thoughtful, meaningful activities.

We had to discipline him, of course, when he was disobedient. That was often. When the custodians found the boy on the locked roof of the school, we laughed with them, and told them he must have been attempting a practical joke of sorts -- but when we arrived home, Vernon physically vented such anger as I never knew he had. Even that didn't solve it. The boy -- _the poor, innocent, victimised boy-who-lived,_ if you listen to some -- endangered our Dudley's life that day at the zoo, and again Vernon whaled him. The giggles came less and less. It was almost under control.

Then he turned 11, and that dratted letter came, and my life fell apart.

If Vernon had cried "Good riddance!" I would not have blamed him. To his credit, he tried so desperately to protect the boy -- to keep him from these people, the very ones who let him be scarred for life, then abandoned him, but they would not be deterred. The magic world barged in, in the middle of the night, to recover their young idol. All of a sudden, it didn't matter that we were his family and they were mere strangers._ Their_ Will Be Done!

Would that man Dumbledore, who put the boy in our house to begin with, come to us and explain himself? Not a chance. He sends his crude gardener, if you will, who calls us prunes, disfigures our son with a pig's tail, and walks off with the boy, with not so much a word of appreciation for what they put us through for ten years!

Was he safe in their care? No. Either he was in fights, or he was disciplined far worse by his own kind. He came home that first June with cuts and bruises. Do you suppose this Dumbledore would say a word to explain why an 11-year-old, left in his care, has _strangulation marks_? Not a bit of it! Vernon was livid.

We chose to continue ignoring it in our lives, as much as we had before. The boy came home every year with new injuries and trauma.

Our Dudley saw it for what it was, a madness; he went to a proper school, and was raised normally, while his cousin read his strange books and kept a dirty owl indoors. I really think he did not believe a word of it until he saw the boy fly off in an Anglia into the night.

Until their mid-teens, I did not fear for Dudley's safety anymore; the boy's magic tricks were as silly as ever. But I knew from Lily's tales what a Dementor was, and knew the boy was telling the truth when he described an attack on Dudley near our home.

Dudley, Vernon and I are now at danger, as much as the boy is.

You can argue we were an awful foster family, and we made him the angry rebel he is. Believe that if you wish.

Or, more fairly --

You could argue that we were two very opposite sorts, which they never should have brought together. The boy was ruined; our happy homelife was destroyed as thoroughly as my sister's was. 

We only tried to love him. Can't you understand?

Can't he?


End file.
